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An empirical investigation of the emergent issues
around OER adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa
Journal Article
How to cite:
Ngimwa, Pauline and Wilson, Tina (2012). An empirical investigation of the emergent issues around
OER adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(4) pp. 398–413.
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c 2012 Taylor Francis
Version: Accepted Manuscript
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http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1080/17439884.2012.685076
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An empirical investigation of the emergent issues around OER
adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa
Pauline Ngimwa and Tina Wilson*
Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA UK
An empirical investigation of the emergent issues around OER
adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa
Within the past few years, Africa has joined the rest of the world as an active
participant in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement with a
number of home-grown and externally driven initiatives. These have the
potential to make an immense contribution to teaching and learning in Sub
Saharan Africa (SSA). However, certain barriers prevent full participation.
This paper reports on qualitative research that sought to investigate SSA’s
readiness to adopt OER. The study involves three case studies based in higher
education institutions involved in OER projects and located in Kenya, Uganda,
and South Africa. Findings indicate contrary to popular belief that low
technology levels in Africa do not necessarily impede adoption of such
educational technologies; the real challenges facing readiness to adopt OER
appear to be related to socio-economic, cultural, institutional and national
issues. This paper argues for a complete mind shift in how people perceive
OER. It also proposes raising awareness of OER at all levels, involving
institutions and government, versioning OER for the African context and
conducting more research on OER adoption.
Keywords: open educational resources; OER in Africa; challenges of adopting
OER
Introduction
When the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) was conceived, supporters
perceived it as a way of making knowledge accessible to all, especially those in most need
(Smith & Casserly, 2006). This view is also shared by the 2002 Unesco Forum1 on the impact
of open courseware for developing countries. In their declaration, the forum participants
expressed “their wish to develop together a universal educational resource available for the
whole of humanity” (UNESCO, 2002 p. 6). Since then, great strides have been made to make
the OER dream a reality all over the world. Ground breaking initiatives such as OpenLearn2,
MIT OpenCourseWare3, UCT OpenContent4 and MERLOT5 now exist, making quality
1
http://www.unesco.org/education/news_en/080702_free_edu_ress.shtml
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/
3
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
4
http://opencontent.uct.ac.za/
2
1
educational content freely and openly available to anyone willing and able to use it. However,
the fact that this notion of OER is foreign and was conceived and framed in the main within
technologically-enabled contexts raises some fundamental issues that influence their effective
adoption in developing countries.
This paper reports findings from a qualitative investigation that explores Sub Saharan
Africa (SSA)’s readiness to adopt OER developed within their own education system.
Framing the investigation within an existing OER project (i.e. Teacher Education in SubSaharan Africa (TESSA)) it was possible to interview institutional practitioners (already
involved in OER in higher education institutions (HEI)) in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa
and discover challenges and success factors that had an impact on their readiness to adopt
OER in this region. Although a single project is not representative of a greatly diverse
continent such as Africa, the choice of TESSA presented an appropriate study context as it
provided access to African practitioners conversant with OER who had first-hand experience
of developing and using such content within their own context. Additionally, nine nonTESSA participants from the same institutions were included to help identify socio-cultural
issues that potentially influenced non-adoption of OER. We first present a brief literature
review followed by a background section which includes a description of the TESSA project.
An account of the research method used is then provided, followed by the research findings
which are discussed within the context of existing knowledge. The paper concludes with
suggestions for future OER development in SSA and similar contexts.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Issues around adoption of OER have been identified in relation to the African continent;
however the discussion has been anecdotal in nature since little documented empirical
evidence exists (Hodgkinson-Williams, 2010). Although broadband access can be limited and
costly (OECD, 2007; Larson and Murray, 2008; Wilson, 2008; Chiles, 2010) previous studies
5
2
http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
have indicated that another fundamental issue is related to the language and culture of OER
developed in English and within the Western culture. As Lane et al. (2010) notes, early
production of OER was from legacy material written in English. These OER are seen as
causing potential pedagogical and cultural issues for users in developing countries (see
Albright, 2005; Selinger, 2004; OECD, 2007; D’Antoni, 2007; Larson and Murray, 2008,
Hatakka, 2009; Selinger, 2009). Wilson (2008) has highlighted this issue in her study of the
suitability of OpenLearn OER (developed by the Open University, UK) for a South African
university. Her study suggested that although these resources would fit within the curriculum
as supplementary materials, they would need adaptation to fit into the language of South
Africa. English is not necessarily the first language in South Africa, which has a number of
different official languages. Hatakka’s (2009) study also identified culturally embedded issues
in the style of the English language used when Western OER have been developed. This
made the content difficult for students to understand. At present little is known about how
OER developed within SSA itself are received and used.
If the vision of tapping the potential of OER in Africa is to be realised, these issues
must be carefully understood and empirically tested in order to identify ways to alleviate
them. The aim of this paper is to highlight OER that have been developed within and for SSA
and discuss the opportunities and challenges that arise when OER have been developed for
this context. The question being addressed is ‘What challenges and success factors are related
to OER adoption when OER are developed within the SSA context?’
BACKGROUND
Africa despite being a late entrant, has witnessed a number of OER initiatives (Butcher, 2010)
and now home-grown projects such as OER Africa exist that promote and support the
creation and use of OER. Externally funded initiatives such as the TESSA project are already
making an immense contribution to teaching and learning on the continent by providing
access to quality educational resources that would otherwise be unaffordable (Wolfenden,
2008; Ngugi and Butcher, 2011).
3
TESSA
TESSA6 is a research and development project initiated by the Open University in the United
Kingdom in 2005 to improve the quality of, and extend access to university-led teacher
education programs in SSA (Wolfenden, 2008; Thakrar et al., 2009). TESSA involves a
consortium of 18 institutions (13 African institutions and 5 international organisations)
delivering teacher education in nine African countries. The consortium, through a series of
workshops across this region worked with teacher trainers (academics) to develop a large
bank of OER in text and audio using local knowledge, materials and approaches. The content
focuses on literacy, numeracy, science and social and personal education and is structured in
such a way that it can be adapted for different environments. This is because it is versioned to
the nine country contexts and translated into Arabic, English, French and Kiswahili (the four
main languages used in this region). According to Wolfenden (2008), these resources are
meant for teachers to support their teaching and learning within their specific classroom
environment. Another characteristic of these resources is that they have been developed to
suit the low technological levels of this region which has limited internet bandwidth.
Resources from the TESSA website can be transformed into a variety of formats i.e.
webpages, word documents (which can be downloaded and amended), pdfs (which can be
printed), CDs and DVDs.
The study
This study follows an interpretative case study methodology where the authors are outsiders
and not involved in the OER project investigated. It is qualitative in nature, with the aim of
gathering evidence to aid the understanding of socio-technical issues affecting adoption of
OER developed in the SSA context. Qualitative research makes achieving this understanding
possible because it enables a deeper understanding of social phenomenon (Maxwell, 2005).
The TESSA project was chosen as the main focus of the study for two main reasons.
First and foremost, it gave access to participants conversant with OER as users and
6
4
www.tessafrica.net
developers in the SSA context. Therefore it was possible to identify issues surrounding OER
adoption from real experiences. The second reason was that TESSA covers different
universities across SSA and therefore provided an opportunity to explore a variety of different
issues surrounding the adoption of OER from a wider perspective.
In order to situate this study within the wider institutional contexts investigated, data
related to socio-cultural issues was also obtained from non-TESSA participants. This was
important for identifying obstacles that influenced non-adoption of OER by those not
participating in OER initiatives in this SSA context.
In total, three case studies of HEI (based in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa) were identified.
The first case study was based in a rural Kenyan university and four participants were
interviewed. These included two academics involved in TESSA resource development who
had introduced the resources to their teacher trainee students. The third participant was one of
the teacher trainee students, a primary school teacher who was using these TESSA materials
in his teaching practice. The fourth participant was a non-TESSA librarian .
The second case study focused on a university in Uganda based in an urban setting
and involved seven participants. They included two TESSA academics who had participated
in content development, two non-TESSA academics, and three non-TESSA librarians.
The third case study was based in an urban South African setting and involved three
institutions. The first was a predominantly face-to-face university (with a distance education
department). Six participants were interviewed and included three TESSA academics, of
which two were involved in resource development while the third was a user of the resources
and helped her teacher trainee students to use them during teaching practice. The other three
participants were non-TESSA librarians.
The second institution in this case study was a distance education university while the
third institution was a non-governmental organization with a focus on distance education in
Africa. In both institutions, two TESSA academics who had been involved in the content
5
development as well as in overseeing the implementation of this project in their respective
institutions were interviewed.
In total, 19 participants, purposively sampled were included (comprising 10 main
participants from TESSA and 9 non-TESSA participants) as summarised in Table 1 below:
Table 1. Summary of study participants
Non-TESSA
TESSA
Characteristics
and roles
Kenya
Uganda
South Africa
Total
Institution 1
Institution 2
Institution 3
1
1
OER
developers
(Academic)
2
2
2
OER Users
1
-
1
Digital
librarians
1
3
3
-
-
7
Academics
-
2
-
-
-
2
2
Total
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
Data collection took place in the respective countries between September and October 2009.
Data was obtained from semi structured interviews and from non-participant observations by
one of the researchers. Interviews lasted between one and two hours and were structured
around the following four areas:
•
participants’ perception and usage of OER,
•
what it takes to be an OER participant and how deeply they were involved,
•
what Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment participants had
access to and what technological challenges they experienced,
6
8
19
•
participants’ views on OER readiness amongst their colleagues, institutions and within
the sub-Saharan region.
All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. These were then coded using
NVivo 8 software, following a thematic analytical approach (Boyatzis, 1998) in order to
identify main concepts. Concepts were derived from data and given a code that best
represented the data (see Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007). In the next phase, similar codes
were grouped together to form categories. These categories were then studied in order to
identify relationships, linkages and patterns.
Data from observations have been included to support the interview data. For
example observations were made of how OER had been adapted to support teaching and
learning. The findings reported below include points of interest which have been illustrated
with verbatim extracts from the participants only identified by roles.
Findings
OVERVIEW OF OER CONTRIBUTION TO EDUCATION
The ten TESSA participants all indicated that the TESSA resources fulfilled the need for
material that is relevant to SSA, of high quality and affordable. The comment below is a
typical comment from the TESSA participants:
“… the teacher education materials that have been developed around TESSA are
materials that are relevant to the setting in Africa, they are dealing with issues of
quality in teaching in Africa, therefore there is an element of relevance to the
needs of the teachers in Africa. ..it is too costly to buy textbooks all the time and
pay subscription fees for journals and some of this material is available for free.”
(Academic 1-Uganda)
The TESSA OER were also integrated into teaching and learning. For example, in
one institution these resources were being used to train teacher trainees as indicated below by
a TESSA participant:
7
“…[the trainee teachers] are using them for their diploma in primary education,
the tutors are using these materials for training and they are encouraging the
teacher trainees to use the activities in the school setting.” (Academic 1-Uganda)
Another example is from the Kenyan teacher trainee, a primary school teacher who
adapted TESSA OER and designed a weather station from scrap materials (such as empty
bottles, pieces of timber and card board). The weather station was relevant to the entire
school, as the weather topic in the national curriculum is taught in all primary school classes.
As a result this teacher reported an immediate positive learning outcome with marked
improvement in the pupils’ understanding of the weather topic in all associated classes.
TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES
The issue of technology was identified as a barrier to successful participation in OER
development. Challenges such as limited and costly internet bandwidth, limited access to
computers and power supply interruption were highlighted. This mainly affected the ability to
work in digital mode as users were forced to use printed copies. One TESSA participant
commented:
“Our biggest challenge is that … print is still dominant, so while most of the
OERs will require that you put back your revisions so that others can share in it
… the tendency not to put back revisions (because you are not developing for
online usage) is very strong, you are tempted to just work offline and so you
cannot contribute to the pool” (Academic 2-Uganda)
There was also variation in the level of impact across the different universities. For
example institutions in East Africa (Uganda and Kenya) appeared to be less equipped
technologically than those in South Africa. This is not a surprise given that South Africa is
more technologically advanced compared to other African regions (Farrell & Shafika, 2007).
The fact that the Kenyan university was located in a rural setting had an impact as internet
access is less prevalent in rural areas than in urban areas (Ivala et al., 2005). A similar
8
technology variation between rural and urban settings has been identified in a study carried
out by Wilson (2008).
Similar technological issues have been highlighted in existing literature (i.e. OECD,
2007; Larson and Murray, 2008; Wilson, 2008; Hatakka, 2009; Chiles, 2010). However, this
research established that these issues have not prevented those willing from participating and
identified useful insights into ways of dealing with similar technological challenges. For
example the study identified a different perception towards technological challenges. All ten
TESSA participants particularly felt that technology was not necessarily critical for OER
implementation. There were examples cited of OER projects in Africa that have succeeded
without technology as noted in this excerpt:
“I mean OER are not really about technical resources …the digital thing
enhances it and it makes it easier to adapt, etc. But actually it isn’t a logical
necessity, we ran a whole OER project and the most we used was emails, so
nobody was required to develop a digital tool.” (Academic 3- South Africa)
Another example is where participants especially those with poor internet
connectivity in Uganda and Kenya felt that the availability of alternative formats such as
print, CDs and cached versions of digital formats enabled them to use OER where internet
access was limited. One participant commented that although teachers do not have access to
the technology at school, they could still access OER on CDs from cyber cafés. These
findings concur with Larson and Murray’s (2008) OER project approach for developing
countries that consists of a blended online and offline repository of high school math and
science video modules. These are developed in different formats including CD, DVD and
video tape to ensure that they are obtainable where internet broadband is not available to
support the streaming of online videos. This blended approach supports the idea that
technology challenges are not necessarily a barrier to participating in OER as they are still
accessible through other non-technically supported formats.
9
Additionally, two of the ten TESSA participants suggested that a way to overcome
the technological challenges was to customise this innovation to fit into the technological
levels of Africa. Their view was that since the OER model was developed within contexts that
are technologically advanced, it is difficult to make this model work well in Africa, and hence
it needs to be customised. The suggestion was that since Africa is so well connected through
mobile technology, OER should be customised in such a way that they can be accessed
through mobile devices. This is a suggestion that was highlighted in Wilson’s (2008) study
where she alluded to the fact that as mobile phones become increasingly available, they will
be a more popular mode for internet access.
SOCIO-CULTURAL AND ECONOMIC ISSUES
The TESSA participants were already supporters of the OER movement through the TESSA
project and therefore they understood the benefits that OER provide and considered
themselves ready for OER adoption. However, they identified the following socio-cultural
issues which they thought hindered readiness to adopt these resources amongst the wider
university community. These issues were also confirmed by observational and interview data
from the other nine non-TESSA participants.
In the first instance, this study identified a general lack of awareness of OER amongst
the non-TESSA participants interviewed. The two non-TESSA academics stated they had
never heard of OER before, even though they were already involved or participating in other
open access activities. One of them was developing digital images of tropical diseases (with
annotations) to be used as free teaching materials by his counterparts in Western universities.
This participant was surprised when it was suggested to him that what he was developing
could qualify as OER material. All seven librarians (from the nine non-TESSA participant
group) interviewed knew very little about OER, even though they were actively engaged in
the Open Access Movement. This was corroborated by a TESSA participant who commented
that some of their colleagues were using these resources without knowing that they were
actually OER. Hatakka’s (2009) study on OER adoption in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
10
highlighted a similar lack of awareness among Bangladeshis who turned to textbooks to
support their content development.
A second issue is related to academic pride and in owning Intellectual Property where
academics think their work is unsurpassed and want to protect it and hence are unwilling to
share it as indicated below by a TESSA participant:
“…people do not want to let go of the copyright of their materials, they don’t
want to say anybody can use this, they still want to own it.” (Academic 4 – South
Africa)
One TESSA participant explained that this could be as a result of most African
academics not having access to current information resources. They think that what they have
developed is still valuable while it might actually have been superseded by new knowledge in
other parts of the world:
“But because of less access to up to date information many people still think
what they found out five years ago when they were undertaking research is so
valuable they should not let others take it.” (Academic 2 – Uganda)
Academic pride was also identified among some who would not expose their work
for scrutiny (by putting their content out as OER) as they feared their work might not
withstand national and international critique. This observation was made by two TESSA
participants.
Thirdly, some academics who have in the past earned an income from their own
copyright materials were hesitant to participate in OER and release the copyright of their
materials for nothing in return. This is a particularly critical issue in Africa where academics
are not always remunerated competitively (see Visser, 2008). An academic (a TESSA
participant) commented:
“Academics … don’t want to support OER because they have made a lot of
money and they continue to make a lot of money out of their materials.”
(Academic 4-South Africa)
11
It is worth noting that the findings above are not unique to the case studies reviewed
in this research but agree with some existing literature (e.g. Hylén, 2006; Larson and Murray,
2008).
Fourthly, though Africans culturally like to share, this is mostly at the oral level. Most
people are happy to talk about their ideas. However, when asked to share them on the internet,
they become shy. One TESSA academic expressed her frustration at her colleagues not
participating even in an online discussion, yet when they met, they were happy to talk about
their ideas. These findings contradict what Kursun et al. (2010) found in their study about
OER development in Turkey. Turkish academics were happy to share their content online as
long as it was not adapted or changed in any way.
The fifth issue identified was the unwillingness of potential OER users to spend time
adapting and using these resources even where the benefits of using OER were clear, a fact
that has been discussed by Albright (2005, p.8) who noted that “the greatest concern is the
time that is required from academics to prepare elements of a course that will be available,
monitored, maintained, updated and perhaps re-formulated for new settings and different
uses”. This was illustrated to a good degree by the Kenyan teacher (a TESSA participant)
who developed a weather station. Even though his colleagues could clearly see the benefits of
the adapted weather station, they were unwilling to spend their time and energy engaging with
the weather station with their students. This issue of having time and motivation to participate
has been highlighted in existing literature. For example, Selinger (2009) has observed that
some teachers lack time and motivation to develop their resources even when they are
supported with a bank of relevant resources and an electronic environment. Studies by Hylén
(2006) and Wilson (2008) also found that potential participants thought they did not have
time to develop or adapt OER.
The sixth issue relates to the attitude towards OER as foreign as was highlighted by
two TESSA participants in South Africa. In one institution, there had been resistance from
academics who did not want to use resources they had not created. They believed their own
content would be better and even quoted the phrase “a not invented here syndrome” to refer to
12
resistance to content developed externally. Hatakka (2009) found similar resistance where
participants thought foreign content hindered their creativity as teachers.
Lastly, this study identified a capacity issue to do with a lack of computer literacy as
also hindering people’s readiness to participate and use OER content. The Kenyan teacher
trainee (a TESSA participant) commented:
“… personally I may be able to use the computer but some of my colleagues are
not.” (Teacher trainee-Kenya)
A related finding was that some of the older academics (who appear not to be
computer literate) did not want to expose their lack of knowledge and therefore resisted
getting involved in technology-related projects. This appears to be a cultural issue which
institutions wishing to take on OER projects should bear in mind. Institutions might want to
depend more on younger academics that are more likely to be interested in ICT.
INSTITUTIONAL AND NATIONAL ISSUES
Factors related to institutional and national policies were also identified as impacting on
African institutions readiness to adopt OER. The biggest challenge was identified as
Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and how these were tied to the policies.
“…the issue really about OER is the licensing issue, that’s the bottom line.”
(Academic 3 TESSA participant - South Africa)
Two out of five South African TESSA participants agreed that universities in that
country still held on to the policy that rewarded academics on the basis of their publications in
accredited journals because this is in line with government policy for financing institutions.
Hence, this discouraged academics from sharing their academic output openly as OER as this
did not support them when it came to promotions and related academic rewards. This finding
has also been highlighted elsewhere in the literature (e.g. Albright, 2005; OECD, 2007;
Chiles, 2010; Hodgkinson-Williams, 2010). These authors observe that an emphasis is placed
on research outputs as a basis for promotion, salary increases and grant awards, as opposed to
13
recognition for developing teaching and learning materials. They advocate adoption of
institutional policies that encourage the opening up of educational content and valuing the
creation of open content.
It was also established that an institution’s ability to provide financial support was
critical in determining the readiness of that institution to embrace OER. An OER project has
financial implications which an institution must be ready to support if such a project is to be
successful. This was a view shared by five out of the ten TESSA participants. One
commented:
“… now what we often hear in the TESSA project is that there are too many
materials and they are too expensive to print, but by the same token we have not
got the electronic infrastructure to make them available electronically, so the
issue of finance is an issue that hits OER in whatever format … they are made
available. .. So in fact it is the economic problems in education in Africa that
impedes everything. This applies to OER adoption.” (Academic 3 –South Africa)
A related point, raised, was the governments’ readiness to support the availability of
cheaper bandwidth. One TESSA participant felt that the technical challenge facing OER
adoption was not really a capacity issue. Rather, it was due to a lack of political will to reduce
the cost of bandwidth. The findings are summarised in table 2 below.
Table 2. Summary of research findings
Benefits of OER to SSA
•
•
•
Obstacles
to OER adoption in SSA
•
•
•
14
Better teaching and learning outcomes
Improved learners’ performance
Access to quality and cheap learning resources
Socio-cultural and economic issues
o Academic pride
o Lack of awareness
o Negative attitudes towards OER as a foreign initiative
o Lack of time/unwillingness to find time to participate
o Fear of loss of extra income
Technology-related costs
Unsupportive institutional and national policies
Discussion
This research established the existence of a positive perception of the contribution OER has
made towards education generally. All ten TESSA participants interviewed confirmed
Wolfenden’s (2008) findings that TESSA OER provide an alternative cheaper, quality and
relevant educational experience to an underserved education system.
This study highlighted that despite there being technological challenges, issues related to
socio-cultural, economic, institutional and national policies were major impediments to SSA’s
readiness to adopt OER. While it might be argued that a number of these issues only confirm
what has been discussed in existing literature, it is important to note that this is one of the few
attempts to provide empirical evidence of the existence of OER developed within the SSA
context.
A second important point is the fact that this investigation was based largely on a
successful OER project. Though the findings of one project cannot be used to generalise for a
whole continent, they offer relevant insights that can be used to overcome some of the
existing challenges experienced in similar contexts. These are discussed below.
One of the key findings was the extent to which OER were being adapted to support
teaching and learning. The successful example of the ‘weather station’ constructed by
adapting TESSA OER shows how possible it is to improve teaching practice with immediate
positive results for learners, as long as there is a willingness to adapt the resources.
It is interesting to note that although some TESSA participants were wary about
foreign content, they were happy to use and adapt the TESSA content. One reason could be
the approach taken, which was to develop OER content with local people and adapt it to
specific cultures, contexts and languages in the SSA country where it was to be made
available (Wolfenden, 2008). This approach improves the relevance and accessibility of these
OER as they need much less adaptation and localisation to the home context. Perhaps
developing countries need to adapt context sensitive approaches such as the one taken by the
15
TESSA project in order to minimise potential issues caused by OER developed in a foreign
language and for a different culture.
Another important insight from this research was that the uptake of OER in the
TESSA project was prevalent amongst the ‘converts’. These were people who believed in
open resources and were willing to get involved. These converts were committed to using and
adapting OER which requires their time investment and motivation. Hodgkinson-Williams
(2010) discuss the role of academics involved in OER development in the light of the “active
agent” described in the Archer’s realist social theory (Archer, 2003, cited in HodgkinsonWilliams, 2010). The academics as the “Active agents” will find the act of developing and
sharing knowledge as one of their ultimate concerns and deliberately find time in their lives to
create and share their resources. Thus, according to Hodgkinson-Williams, participation in
OER development is very much seen as a voluntary contribution from academics.
Consequently, the inclusion of such people who are willing to volunteer their time to use and
develop OER seems to be an important consideration while thinking about ways of scaling up
OER adoption. This suggests that we need to have more of these ‘active agents’. However, it
should be noted that this is not always easy to achieve as there is potential for these ‘active
agents’ to loose interest and withdraw from active involvement. For example Petrides and
Jimes (2008) report on a project developing high school science texts which started with 420
volunteers though in the end only ten became regular content contributors.
To counteract this, existing literature (i.e. D’Antoni, 2009; Chiles, 2010) has
documented extensively the need for creating awareness of OER at institutional and national
levels. Creating awareness has the effect of changing attitudes towards OER and encourages a
mind shift from traditional approaches to embracing new open methods. As this research
showed, the non-TESSA participants were already embracing the concept of openness though
they were not aware of OER. This shows that there is potential amongst university
communities and awareness raising efforts could result in increased participation.
This study also showed the impact institutional and national policies have on OER
adoption, a fact that has been noted previously (see Albright, 2005; D’Antoni, 2007; OECD,
16
2007; Hodgkinson-Williams, 2010). Traditional institutional policies that guide how
academics are remunerated need to be replaced with more open access friendly approaches.
Where such policies have been implemented, there has been a noticeable change in how
academics view OER. For example, Keats (2009) reported on his South African-based
university’s philosophy of freedom which made it easy to introduce an OER strategy in the
university. This is also happening in other African universities (see Ngugi and Butcher, 2011)
where policies are being revised to put academics’ participation in OER development at the
same level as research for tenure and promotional considerations. This will encourage
participation and help change negative attitudes towards OER. This policy change should
happen at the national level as suggested by D’Antoni (2009). This will not only influence
appropriate support in terms of resourcing but also strengthen technology infrastructure that
supports educational institutions’ functions (affordable and widely available broadband).
Conclusion
This empirically driven study has provided interesting insights into the readiness of SSA to
adopt OER, an area where little research on OER exists and in the main is anecdotal in nature.
The research findings in this paper have emphasized that the main obstacle influencing
adoption of OER is related to socio-cultural issues (i.e. a lack of awareness, negative
attitudes, limited capacity, academic pride and loss of income) as well as policy related
factors at national and institutional levels. The research has also established that technology
issues, though important, are not considered a major obstacle. This is the case as users have
identified alternative blended approaches that fit with the low-technological levels present in
this context. In light of these findings, this research could be taken forward in the SSA
context in two ways through: (i) identification of realistic and effective awareness raising
strategies; (ii) investigation of strategies for strengthening and expanding the number of
existing OER practitioners using emerging technologies such as mobile technologies. Finally,
the fact that this research was primarily based on an already successful OER project has
presented some useful insights that could inform other related OER projects in developing
countries.
17
Acknowledgements. We would like to thank our study participants in Kenya, Uganda and
South Africa and the TESSA project. This study was funded by the OLnet project which in
turn is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. TESSA itself is funded by the
Allan and Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Notes on Contributors
Pauline Ngimwa is a researcher at The Open University’s Institute of Educational
Technology. Her research interest is in the area of educational digital resources in higher
education. She has extensive work experience in higher education and information
management sectors in Africa. Pauline has a Master of Research and an MPhil. in Information
Sciences. Her PhD in Educational Technology is from the Open University.
Email: [email protected]
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/pauline.ngimwa
Tina Wilson is a research fellow in The Open University’s Institute of Educational
Technology in the UK. She has been the principal investigator on a number of internally and
externally funded research projects concerned with the educational use of online resources,
systems and tools. Her recent work is in the area of Open Educational Resources having
worked on The Open University's Open Content Initiative ‘OpenLearn’ funded by the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (USA), the ‘Project on Open Content for Knowledge
Exposition and Teaching’ (POCKET) funded by JISC (UK) and ‘Curriculum and Pedagogy
in Technology Assisted Learning’ (CAPITAL) funded by BECTA (UK). She is also on the
steering committee for the (Open University) OER ‘Languages Open Resources Online’
(LORO) project funded by JISC. Her current post on the Open Learning network project
(OLnet) is funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Tina’s MSc is in
Information Technology from Coventry University and her PhD in Computing is from The
Open University.
Email: [email protected]
http://iet.open.ac.uk/people/martina.wilson
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